She breathes in the hairspray topnotesof a highland single malt, which needs a glassnot a tooth mug. Her lips sting,they have opened and closed all day.Here’s to a taste of being happyafter the gentle pain of closure – the pangof goodbye to the St Andrews’ teacherwho’d holidayed in her home town,to the Welsh poet she hopes to meet again,goodbye to the rather famous,and to the Iraqi poet with wheat-beer breathwho kissed her on both cheeks.

The sting repeats with the second mugfullwhile the Gaelic band plays elsewhere.The moon’s larger than she’s ever known.She’s tired of smiling, wants her lipsto burn to silence, her ears to restfrom adjusting to accents, her eyes to start seeingdouble. She senses her before she sees her,glimpsed in the mirror, opposite the bed,past the flowers – a woman, not a poet –just a woman drinking alone.She doesn’t like to judgebut that whisky’s half her age.

Katrina Naomi

St Andrews

No poetry map of Scotland would be complete without lots of poems about St Andrews, and this first one we're posting is not only about St Andrews but also about StAnza, by the poet Katrina Naomi. It was first published in The London Magazine in 2012, and sharp eyes will notice that it contains the lines which appeared on the StAnza coffee coasters.

We launched our Mapping Scotland in Poetry project at StAnza with a splendid array of poems, of which the final poem was Judith Taylor's wonderful homage to her home town. Our previous post on this topic picked up the baton to continue our own particular poetic tour of Scotland, so it feels only appropriate that we should start with Judith's poem, which we have learned she wrote specially for the project. For which our thanks! Who knows where we'll end up by the time this project is finalised, but we know exactly where we're starting from.

So here it is. Do let us have your comments on your own memories of Coupar Angus, and even/or a suitable photograph. And keep the other poems coming in!

Moments in the Great History of Coupar Angus

William Wallace passed this way,didn't stop. Mary Queen of Scots stoppedbut that's not much to sing ofshe stopped everywhere. And the Duke of Cumberland…

is an embarrassment.We were please enough to see him at the timebut now we'd like to think that we weresympathetic to the Highlandersbefore they were defeated and Romantic

so we don't mention himand there's another story (totally fictitious)that says we also had a visit from the Bonny Prince.

But our closest brush with historywas in 1917.There's even a postcard of the aftermath:

the South Lodge at Keithick, on the Perth Roadthe keeper and his wifeposed self-consciously on the doorstepand a passing motorist, roped in to add

- well, who knows what he was supposed to addbut there he is, parkedright in the roadfor as long as it took to get the picture

and none of them are looking at its focus.That black hole in the roof, above the door

punched by a piece of stone the size of a human fistthe biggest fragment of the meteoritethat went to pieces (so we say)when it realised it might end up in Coupar Angus…

really, though, it scattershotted all Strathmorefrom Forfar to Collace.Our one and only claim to distinction isthis visible piece of damage

and look again at the photograph:it's faked. The hole's been scratched in on the negative.It was February. Bitter weather.1917, when folk had other things to think about

and who would wait around with a holey rooffor the photographer from Valentine's?It was mended when he got thereso he improvised.

I doubt if anyone minded.There are lots of disaster postcards:in the ones of burning buildings you can seethe strokes of the pen that drew the flames in.

Anyway, this was Perthshire. We inventedselling history to the tourists.We gave the world at least two (probably more)phoney Stones of Destiny.

Why shouldn't Coupar Angushave something to show for how closedisaster came?We could have been a contender:Scotland's very own Tunguska.

Instead, we're heregoing about our business much as usualonly a little bit resentful when we think of howhistory passed us by.

Judith Taylorwritten for A Poetry Tour of ScotlandStAnza Festival, St Andrews9th March 2014